


on your toes

by sabinelagrande



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Beau: forever hot for ladies that can beat her up, Canon-Typical Violence, Crushes, F/F, Femslash February, Mentor/Protégé, Pre-Relationship, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13673328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: The Expositor will not be kept waiting.





	on your toes

The Expositor doesn't wait for Beau to find her, but somehow Beau knew she wouldn't. Beau is walking down a sketchy alley in Zadash, looking for her sketchy friends, and a figure drops from a rooftop. Beau immediately goes into a defensive stance, which she was ready for anyway, because these days she's only ever like ten minutes from things popping off.

"Good," the Expositor says, then she clocks Beau in the face.

"Not that good, I guess," Beau says, then she lashes out with her staff. She makes to sweep the Expositor's legs out from under her, but the Expositor leaps nimbly over her staff and pops Beau in a spot that makes Beau's arm go numb.

"Aw, man," Beau says, shaking her arm.

"Show me that I did not teach you in vain," the Expositor says, and Beau goes after her again, targeting carefully this time. The Expositor serpentines gracefully around her blows, but Beau catches her in the solar plexus, drawing a satisfying grunt of pain from the other woman. The strike doesn't go unanswered, and it's on from there.

Beau soundly loses the fight, but the Expositor helps her up and teaches her a wicked spin-kick before disappearing onto the rooftops again. All in all, it's a good trade, and in the morning she has some epic bruising to show for it. That's always a plus.

\--

Beau is busy for a while after that, when they get a little tangled up with the Myriad; it's fun work, though not exactly reputable, and it has them moving from place to place for a minute. It's a few weeks later when Beau, lost on her way to find the privy at an inn, gets slammed in the back of the head so hard that she falls over. Still seeing stars, she rolls, coming up in a fighting pose that's maybe a little unsteady.

"If I wanted a back-alley thug," the Expositor says, smacking Beau in the knee, "I could find," a shot to the side that Beau narrowly avoids, "a thousand filthy wretches," a knee to the stomach that Beau does not avoid, "to throw coin at."

"Okay, so we're clear," Beau says, throwing an elbow that the Expositor bats away. "A little dishonorable is chill, but definitely not helping the mob?"

"The Myriad is no mere mob," the Expositor says, catching Beau in the temple in a way that makes her rock on her heels. "They are everything we stand against. They would rewrite history and make themselves ascendant. They are not simple thieves to be indulged at one's convenience."

"Listen, Dairon," Beau says, adopting a defensive stance just so she can clear her head a little bit. "Can I call you Dairon?"

"No," the Expositor says, and Beau ducks out of the way of another pressure point blow.

"I didn't know about the history part," Beau admits. "They had coin, so we didn't ask questions."

The Expositor lashes out with another flurry of blows, getting in several solid hits. "Asking questions is your purpose in life," she says, with genuine rage in her voice; it might be the blows to the head talking, but the Expositor is hot when she's angry, more a force than a person. "You are here to ask questions and obtain answers. Nothing else matters but that."

Beau can't take much more of this, so she plants her staff on the ground, leaning on it heavily as she holds up her other hand. "I get it," she says. "I needed to keep my head on a swivel and I didn't."

The Expositor goes out of her fighting form; Beau almost takes the opening, but she's pretty sure this has been a punitive beatdown and not a training one. "And what will you do from now on?"

Beau thinks carefully about her answer before responding. "Ask questions," she says. "Get answers. Vet the people we work for before I get in too deep."

"You are learning after all," the Expositor says.

"Because you beat it into me," Beau says.

"I prefer to think I beat it out of you," the Expositor says. "Rest. Find your way out of this in the morning."

Then the Expositor is gone, and Beau drags herself back into the inn, her tail between her legs. Everyone has gone upstairs but Jester and Molly, and Beau drops heavily into a chair across from them.

Molly looks between her and the fresh mug of beer in front of him, then pushes it across the table. "You need this more than I do," he says.

"Thanks," Beau says; for an asshole, Molly is pretty alright.

"Whatever you did, please don't do it," Jester says, patting Beau's arm to cast a healing spell on her.

"You know what?" Beau says, taking a pull of the beer. "I think I won't."

\--

Beau thinks she's maybe simultaneously failed and passed the test, because she sees the Expositor more frequently after that, perhaps once every five or six weeks. Usually she gets her ass handed to her, but the Expositor is teaching her more now, things that go beyond fighting. On one scary but cool occasion, she learns to run an interrogation, and it's hard to go back to thinking normally after that, not seeing the weaknesses in people's words like she sees the weaknesses in their bodies.

She can't decide if it hurts or helps that the Expositor is an incredibly attractive woman; Beau has this thing about attractive women, especially ones that can wipe the floor with her as easy as breathing. Not all of the feelings she has about the Expositor could be considered appropriate for a mentoring kind of relationship, though Beau really has to wonder what the fraternization policies for a secret monk society devoted to rooting out evil through underhanded means are. She would happily fraternize with the Expositor given her chance at it, but she doesn't have much of an opening.

She never does find one, so she just shoehorns one in. They're in a learning fight instead of a punishment fight, which has been the case more and more since Beau learned to ask the right questions. Beau is still not winning, but today she's not really losing either, holding her own instead. It seems like as good a time as any to do something stupid. 

"When I'm done training," Beau says, but seeing the look on the Expositor's face, she changes her tack. "When I've reached, y'know, a good level of training to where I might be considered a fellow Expositor and everything, do you wanna get a drink?"

The Expositor stops cold, the first time Beau has ever seen her thrown, including the time Beau literally threw her across the room. She stares at Beau for a long moment, then drops her head back and laughs. It's a really lovely sound, but Beau wonders if she only thinks that because she's so hot for her.

"On the day you become my equal, I'll buy," the Expositor says.

Beau brings her hands up, beckoning. "Then let's not waste time."

A few hours later, Beau returns to the tavern where the rest of her crew is gathered, and she finds them all sitting at one table, looking at each other gravely. She doesn't say anything at first, just gets a drink from the bar and brings it over, sitting next to Yasha.

"We have to talk," Jester says, and Beau gets the distinct sense that she just sat down to an intervention.

"Are you in trouble?" Nott asks, sounding worried. "I don't know if we can help, but we'll try."

"What?" Beau says, frowning. She points to the cut on her head that's still bleeding onto her eyebrow. "Oh, this? I ran into Dairon again."

"And this Dairon beats the shit out of you regularly?" Caleb says warily.

"Yeah," Beau says, grinning. "It's awesome."

"You like it?" Fjord says.

Beau sits back, an arm slung over the back of her chair. "She's like lowkey my girlfriend."

"I'd be deeply concerned if I thought that was true," Molly says.

"No, you wouldn't," Beau says.

"I'd be slightly concerned if I thought that was true," he amends, and Beau raises her drink to him.

"It's fine," Beau says. "Just secret society stuff. For the greater good and everything."

"I see," says Caleb, in a voice that says he doesn't, but Beau just sips her ale. Other people getting it is not the point; Beau would be a very different person if she put a premium on being understood. And yet, maybe that's one reason she's so drawn to the Expositor, who is fluent in Beau's bullshit and knows exactly how to cut through it.

It's something to think about, while she gets quietly drunk and amuses herself thinking about how these people actually care.

\--

And Beau is still fighting, still training, still learning, for reasons that go beyond anything as simple as wanting to hook up with her mentor.

But that doesn't mean she's not still looking forward to that drink.


End file.
